For Champion Royals, a Middling Return to New York

The last time the Kansas City Royals played in New York, they left town as World Series champions. They are back now — in a different borough, facing the Yankees in a four-game series in the Bronx, but on familiar and friendly ground.

“We fly into La Guardia, so it’s right next to Citi Field,” first baseman Eric Hosmer said before batting practice Monday. “That haul back — especially when you get on the highway and you get in that tunnel there — it brings back memories. We were riding back from there on the bus having won a world championship.”

The Royals have miles to go for a repeat. They fell below .500 on Monday with a 6-3 loss. Chris Young, who won last year’s World Series opener in relief, tied a dubious team record by allowing five home runs in a game.

“It’s a horrible feeling,” Young said, adding that his fastball had decent velocity but no life. “I put in a lot of hard work and effort to be good at this game, and the results aren’t there right now. It’s frustrating.”

The loss was the Royals’ 10th in 13 games, and Young’s struggles swelled the starters’ E.R.A. to 6.93 during that stretch. At 15-16 over all, the Royals have a losing record for the first time since July 2014. But Manager Ned Yost cited another rough patch as a comforting precedent.

“We’ve done it before,” said Yost, whose team went 11-17 in September before its charmed postseason run. “We’ll break through.”

For Hosmer, who homered in the eighth inning Monday, this trip did not represent his first time back in New York. He had visited around the holidays and found himself waiting for a friend by the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. A police officer approached Hosmer and told him he could not stand there. Hosmer was startled until he realized the officer was joking.

“Because you beat my Mets,” the officer said.

The Royals took four of five games from the Mets, with Hosmer tying the score in the clincher by charging to the plate on a grounder in the ninth inning. It was a daring dash that typified the Royals’ aggressive, athletic offensive style, and their overpowering bullpen stifled the Mets the rest of the way.

“I think what we’ve had here the last few years — it works,” said reliever Luke Hochevar, who won the decisive Game 5 with two scoreless innings. “Teams are looking to be competitive, and so they’re going to see what has helped other teams. Winning the World Series kind of made it a little more evident.”

The Royals started this season 12-6 before their recent slump. Their formula has led to two consecutive American League pennants, and the Yankees seemed to be emulating part of it by trading for Aroldis Chapman in December.

The Yankees, like the Royals, typically do not get many innings from their starters, so the trade seemed to acknowledge that Kansas City’s way could work for them. Not so, Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman said.

“I just saw an opportunity to grab somebody, and we did it,” Cashman said. “Was this better than everything else that we had on the 25? And the answer was yes. But it wasn’t a copycat thing.”

Manager Joe Girardi emphasized that past Yankees teams — like the champions of the late 1990s — also had stingy bullpens that effectively shortened games. Cashman said he did not think the Royals had landed on an innovative strategy for building a winner.

“They’ve got a good defense, they’ve got a good bullpen, they’ve got good players, and they’re hungry,” he said. “But was there any secret formula they uncovered, like, ‘This is a new way to go’? I don’t see anything like that.”

The Royals have never claimed to be a template for others. General Manager Dayton Moore has steadfastly maintained that he designed his team to fit his big ballpark and modest payroll. He traded and drafted shrewdly and showed the kind of patience that would be hard to imagine in New York. The Royals’ championship ring, after all, includes 30 diamonds around the face — for 30 years between titles.

To earn another one, they need to play better. The Royals entered Monday’s game averaging just 3.4 runs per game, the fewest in the American League. Their on-base plus slugging percentage with runners in scoring position, .625, was the worst in the majors.

Yost has used Alcides Escobar, who has a .286 on-base percentage, in the leadoff spot every game. That says a lot about Yost, who is known for trusting his players, sometimes in defiance of statistics. But it also highlights his lack of alternatives.

Only Hosmer, batting .336, has hit much this season. But he sees hope beyond the losing record.

“I think that’s why you sleep a little better at night — the effort’s there; the competitiveness is there,” Hosmer said. “It’s just not happening. If you saw guys not competing or you saw guys dogging it, there would certainly be a problem. But there’s none of that. We’re just simply not getting it done.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B11 of the New York edition with the headline: For Champion Royals, a Middling Return. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe